He is Marshall

He has been a Savage, a member of the Crew and, most recently, a Red Devil. Now it is time for Trevor Paro to be one of the Thundering Herd.

One of the best athletes to ever come down the pike in western Montana, Paro, the pride of Hot Springs, has signed a scholarship offer to play baseball for Marshall University. Paro signed his NLI (National Letter of Intent) with Marshall last week.

Yep, that Marshall University, the Division I NCAA school located in Huntington, West Virginia. The one they made a movie about after a tragic plane crash involving the football team, the “We are Marshall” school everyone has heard about.

After an already storied sports career that began in Hot Springs and continued in Spokane and Longview, Washington, that’s where Trevor is headed, to play D-I baseball for the Herd.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to play Division I baseball and it is finally a reality,” Paro said Monday. “I have mixed feelings going to the east coast because I will miss seeing all my friends and family, but it will be nice to explore a new part of the states for two years.”

Paro will be a junior in Huntington after spending the last two years in Longview playing junior college baseball for the Lower Columbia College Red Devils in the Northwest Athletic Conference.

A JUCO powerhouse team, the Red Devils recently won the NWAC tournament championship and Paro played a crucial role batting leadoff and playing shortstop for Lower Columbia, earning all-tournament, all-conference and Gold Glove honors before he was finished.

Of course, Paro’s many accomplishments in high school sports through the years has been well-chronicled in the Ledger, and he was recently featured in an article for his college baseball career up to this point in the June 6 issue.

Paro was weighing offers from several schools before deciding on Marshall.

“I always wanted to play for WSU or Gonzaga growing up, but the older I got, the more I realized that those are football and basketball schools,” he said, “and Marshall is a big baseball school.”

Proof of Paro’s assessment can be found in the most recent major league player draft, where several Marshall players were selected.

Running down his dreams one by one as his career evolves, Paro’s biggest dream is probably being drafted into the big leagues. The way his career has gone so far, it may be unwise to bet against him realizing that lofty goal.

“Yeah, hearing my name get called in the MLB draft would be unbelievable,” he said. “That would be more than a dream come true.”